A Chorus of Talented Boys

The Special Olympics
floor hockey team from South Africa loves to sing. "When they sing, they sing in
unity, they sing as a team. It inspires them, and gives them that little more
energy to go onto the hockey field and play their best game," says Thembile
Nokulung, their team manager. It wasn't that way when the team first assembled
six months before the 2009 World Winter Games in Boise, Idaho. They stayed to
themselves at first, but they quickly dropped those barriers and became a close
team. They are a bunch of teen-age boys, just like any other team of boys who
joke and play and bond with each other, Nokulung said. For many people in South
Africa, it may seem surprising that this team of young men with intellectual
disabilities is so ordinary. "People tend to talk to them differently, or treat
them differently. They don't tend to realize they've just as normal as we are,"
she said. Intellectual disabilities don't diminish their "God-given talent, and
that talent is to play sports."

About Me:

More
than a dozen University of Miami students volunteered as photographers and
videographers at the 2009 Special Olympics World Winter Games in Boise,
Idaho.

Video:

This video shows the South African
floor hockey team practicing, training and singing their way to
acceptance.Watch
the video